Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,

I did a questionnaire on post-traumatic stress disorder and its effect on the immune system. I gave copies to a doctor and therapists, asking them to pass it out to their patients, but I passed it out too late, and I don't have any data. I don't think I can wait until a day before the deadline, so I was wondering how I could possibly meet the requirement of a two page conclusion without any data at all. I only got one survey back.

I assume I'll just go over everything I did wrong and talk about how I could make it better?

Hi animeragon,

Sorry no one has responded to your question yet. In the future, I would definitely start earlier, especially when your results depend on other people! Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to learn that lesson is to end up in a situation like this! .. I think many of us Experts have had bad moments like this, where we procrastinated and didn't get what we wanted done.

You can't fix that now though. Hopefully you have received more data in the past few days. If not, you'll have to use the one survey you did get back, and explain that not enough people sent them to you fast enough. I would turn your report in as it is, but also ask your teacher for an extension so you can rewrite a better discussion and conclusion later when you do have more results. You could also give her a plan on how you are going to analyze the data (what equations you will use, e.g. standard deviations or something similar, what trends you are looking for and what you expect overall and why). Flesh out exactly how you expect you'd analyze the results once you got them.

You might also look at other research papers (check out google and google scholar and you can often find copies for free) that have done similar research, and see what their results were. If anything, you can at least discuss what you might expect to see for your own research based on other people's results. Make sure to cite their work and emphasize that they are not your results otherwise you'd get in HUGE trouble for plagiarizing!

Just quickly typing "ptst immune" into Google brought up some papers for me.

Hi, did you drop off your survey in a Veteran (VA)/military hospital? Since physicians and therapists outside the VA/military healthcare system will unlikely be treating too many PTSD patients. If time permit you should discuss with a local VA/military hospital in dropping off the questionnaire in the appropriate clinic, they might require the questionnaire to obtain IRB (institutional review board) approval. If you are completely out of time, you should take Amber suggestion and to a review of research papers, and you can also try to interview physicians/therapists with experience treating PTSD patients to gain additional insight.

Michael